CA request to take over inmate health care denied

PRISONS

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, May 31, 2012

A federal judge rejected a request by California prison officials Wednesday to regain control of inmate health care, which has been under court-supervised receivership for six years, and said the state must first show it can provide adequate medical treatment.

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson of San Francisco appointed a receiver to manage health care at California's 33 prisons in February 2006, saying the lack of proper care was killing an average of one inmate a week, and overall conditions violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The current receiver, Clark Kelso, has reported improvements in the prisons' medical staff and facilities, and said a "turnaround plan" he proposed for the system in 2008 is about 80 percent complete. A new prison hospital in Stockton, with 1,700 beds, is due to be completed at the end of 2013.

The prisons are also less crowded, in response to a U.S. Supreme Court order a year ago requiring a population reduction of more than 30,000 inmates by next spring. Most of the reduction so far is the product of Gov. Jerry Brown's program of sentencing low-level felons to county jails instead of state institutions.

In a May 7 filing with Henderson, Brown's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said it was ready to resume health care management within 30 days. The receivership drives up costs and "disrupts democratic principles by shifting control away from the state," the department said.

But Henderson said Wednesday the department hasn't yet shown it can make the needed improvements on its own. The receivership will stay in place until Kelso's 2008 plan is accomplished, unless the state demonstrates earlier that it can provide care at least as good as the receivership, the judge said.

In the meantime, he said, independent auditors will continue to assess health care at each prison, and state officials should work with Kelso on ways to achieve "the gradual return of inmate medical care," with court monitoring. He did not say how long this might take.

State prisons spokesman Jeffrey Callison said the department still believes the receivership is no longer needed but is "encouraged that the court is directing the receiver to start returning health care authority back to the state."

Donald Specter, a lawyer for prisoners who sued the state over their medical treatment in 2001, estimated that the transition would take a year or more under the terms of Henderson's order. He called it a "very reasonable and promising plan to return the health care system to the state."

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